Today it has been 1 year and 1 day since I shouted very hard ‘NO!’ at someone with my hands pressed to my ears. I have never been there again. No is no. Enough is enough. And I celebrate that today.

I gave myself a birthday present and took an online course in intuitive portrait painting with Yvon van Bergen for the first five days of November. Since then I try every week to practice the method she taught us.
It’s fun to do, but I have to get used to what comes out of my hands when not thinking of the outcome, the whole idea of intuitive, haha! Anyway, the result is different from what I would like to hang on the wall myself. I think I have to get used to who else I am inside.
My friend, colleague and counselor Esmée reminded me that I should see it as a path, a process, and I should not focus on the end goal. But just playfully paint from here to self-portraits. Playing. Oh yeah, forgot about that one, haha!
What also strengthens my self-confidence is that I shared this photo on Instagram, in my stories, and that I received such a nice response from a sweet woman who immediately wanted to buy my portrait! Wow! So if you liked this one too, you’re out of luck.
But I am bound to make such a beautiful portrait again! :-)

“Listen, the best advice on aging is this:
What’s the alternative? The alternative, of course, is death. And that’s a lot of shit to deal with. So I’m happy to deal with menopause. I’ll take it.”
— Whoopi Goldberg

When I grow up I want to be an old woman.
- Michelle Shocked

I hid behind dead flowers, a mask that no longer fitted, had never actually fitted me and everything I did not want to show it just showed but in pieces.
Incomprehensible.
Elusive.
And then I complained about not being understood and being lonely.

(And when I finally could take off the mask, it was March 2020.)

Marielle, September 2020 ♥ ️💋

Why would I worry about getting older - what’s to moan about?
Dawn French

About my body, getting older and thicker and more wrinkled and rounder and softer and more flabby
(So I don’t say less beautiful but just different!)

It’s a wonderful world
And you take and you give
And the sun fills the sky
In the space where you live
It’s a day full of dreams
It’s a dream of the day
And the joy that it brings
Nearly sweeps her away
-David Sylvian

Portrait in between. :)
I want to make new nudes for the series with jellyfish, but not right now. I want to take those pictures with slow shutter speed, my favorite. That you can see movement. But I’m hot today. Warm as in if-I-just-move-a-little-bit-I-break-into-a-sweat.
(#oversharingismymiddlename)
Perimenopause, you know.
And now that I’ve just been doing the groceries for a whole week, I’m done exercising haha.
Tomorrow is another day.

About my body, getting older and thicker and more wrinkled and rounder and softer and more flabby.
(So I don’t say less beautiful but just different!)
And about jellyfish.
:)

About my body, getting older and thicker and more wrinkled and rounder and softer and more flabby. And about jellyfish.
:)

When you screw up your eyes
When you screw up your face
When you throw out your arms
And keep changing your shape
Taste the taste in your mouth
Taste the taste on your tongue
On the film on your eyes of what I’ve become
- The Cure

Today I celebrate that 30 years ago, during a motorcycle ride on the Posbank, Peter officially asked me to come and live with him. I had been living with him since the end of June, our first date, but now I could finally move the rest of my shit and really start living together. With him, and with his brother and his sister and her friend who also all lived in that house in the beginning. Haha.
But that is now thirty years ago, a child and a city ago. I didn’t even think I would get to live that long, let alone live with someone else that long.
And after a bit of a turbulent year I still know, or maybe again, that he is the nicest and sweetest to spend my life with.
So now I’m making up and dressing up (hence my eyebrows in the dye), and later tonight we go out for dinner at Bar Berta, visiting Spain. The weather feels like Spain as well. :)
Thank you dear Peter for these 30 years together. You have to keep me now of course. The warranty has expired. :) Love you! ♥ ️

Peter and Marielle 1990-2020

My new series “six different ways” in the making. Exciting. All photos / digital collages finished and this is a preliminary outtake. I think it will have to be twice six images at the end. Six taken from older portraits when I still had brown hair and six from now, probably the left ones. See how it works with coloring. I like it already in black and white but the idea was with color and now I’m afraid to screw up. Haha. But luckily I can always print new ones. :) Playing and messing around is the new motto! Enough serious things last year. Time for fun!

I am slowing down
As the years go by
I am sinking
So I trick myself
Like everybody else
The secrets I hide
Twist me inside
They make me weaker

The Cure - sinking

Still making images for my new series of black and white self portraits that I’m going to color. Still having fun playing with these photo’s. Relaxing on the couch with my iPad.

Making images for my new series. Playing a lot. Then choose and print. And then color with ecoline markers. I’m having fun! Haha!

Playing with black and white work that I made at the end of 2016. So much fun to do!

Dear Prudence. 1, 2 and 3 Three self-portraits / collages / images about the time that my parents divorced and the darkness and the powerlessness and the heaviness and the fear that I have carried with me ever since and what I have been doing with EMDR and so on last year. Processing, letting go and more. It hit me again at the end of January and then it was time for this small series of collages. A tribute to the Marielle of that time. The dark may be there and wear it with your light. Dear Prudence, won’t you come out to play?

My ears are telling the truth, all you need is love. .😊♥️

This had to get out of me. I don’t know what I want or will do with it. No idea. I don’t have a clear story. A feeling of yes, that’s how it feels. Nor will it be a series. Or it should be a series of all different collages. I’ll just leave it like that and maybe I’ll get back to it. But I think it should go out into the world, so here it goes! :-) Thank you for seeing me, thank you! ♥ ️

series I make about rolling up, crouching, wanting to be invisible, and self-protection like an Armadillo. .

With a good tip from my fake daughter / girlfriend / teacher Satijn Panjigay, namely letting the daisies come through my body, this is now finished. I still have to print and see if this edit has a good color and so on but this feels good.

“dissolving” or dissolving. The feeling that I had most of last year. Wanting to disappear and sometimes experiencing that feeling. That there’s nothing left, just a print or an echo. That’s how it felt to me. Then. Not anymore. Hooray for therapy. :) But good to have a memory of this for myself. Because it is a part of me and it needs to see the light like all other parts of me.

I’m playing around with collages. I used to make lots and lots of collages. But never with myself in it. So I try it out. And immediately taken a useful starting point: unpleasant stupid things that I sometimes think about myself when I look in the mirror. Fortunately I laugh about it and I am also very good at saying sweet and nice things to myself and thinking about myself. Like “hey sweety, you look fabulous again today!” It varies, per day and so on. You know that. :) What kind of nasty things do you sometimes think about yourself? And do you make amends with yourself by saying something sweet? .

Went to see a documentary about Lydia Lunch at the IFFR. What a woman!!! She followed her heart and/or pussy ever since she was a young girl. So inspiring.

Thank you for seeing me! Wishing you best Christmas ever and a wonderful new year! may you make all your dreams come true en live your most beautiful stories.

Day 11: ten years ago

This was my newsletter ten years ago. Moem, my company in coaching and mentoring women in the field of relationships and sensuality, celebrated her five years. I gave online courses and training and workshops in Utrecht. I wrote a column in the Santé for a year in 2009. Facilitated a course ‘Sluts and Goddesses’ with Cora Emens. Was seen in the Viva as a punky pin-up. Bought my first real new bike (I just saw on my computer looking for what happened in 2009) and gloriously survived a whole five weeks of single motherhood, haha, while my love toured Europe on his motorbike. So long ago and it seems like yesterday.

I had lost my muchness I thought I gently lower myself slowly down I take it easy

and then I got a push or did I drop myself? and I fell and I fell and I fell deeper and deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole

I became small and big again and small again I was no longer myself

I almost lost my head - off with her head !! - I had to let go everything my head as well it remained on my body but nothing more

i was small and big and everything was so confusing and turned around and inverted and upside down curiouser and curiouser

and when I started to get used to the fact that there is no normal anymore that everyone is crazy that there are no rules and so many rules that I will never understand that everything is so elusive that that is how it should be and that that is not bad or scary but it just is

then I found my muchness again

And now I just have to go somewhere and if I walk long enough I’ll get there

I’m working on a new project about something I’m feeling which I’ll explain later when things become more clearer. For now just following my heart and see where this will bring me.

Stopping myself for going too fast. After my therapy and EMDR I so want everything to be over and done with. I want everything to be normal, to be the same as before again. And every time I’m going too fast I find myself in tears. There’s no more normal. Everything has changed and healing and grieving take time. Being so hard to and impatient with myself doesn’t help. So stop. Breathe. Feel. Stay with the feelings and breathe them in and out. Pffff. . (photo+edit with iPad)

Club Fellini, Utrecht, 1989 (foto 2016)

She was a princess and life was light. No, that’s not true. Life was crap but there, for one night, for as many nights a week as possible, life was light. Disco light.

The wharf cellar was her palace. She walked along the line of people to the door of the palace and was admitted by a doorman with tattoos and an earring. She left her cloak and extra shoes and stockings with the chambermaids and hopped into the ballroom. She waved at the butler at the bar who was pouring her drink and walked over to the orchestra master behind the turntable to give him a kiss. And then the room was for her. There were other people too, but that wasn’t really important. There was room enough to occupy. Her heels quickly found a rhythm, her legs bent, her hips rocked softly, her arms waved, her hands gestured, her eyes turned inward, seeing nothing, feeling everything.

She was a princess, and life was light, and the lamps lit her, and she felt beautiful and strong, and her legs carried her majestically, and the music shook her bones, thumped through her whole body and briefly, briefly, perhaps tomorrow again, but one day it would be over, she felt like a real princess and life was beautiful. It was light. Disco light. But almost real.

Took after the shoot ‘letting go’. A little tired and empty. Edited on iPad with Afterlife app.

“Only no-mind can be creative and radical.” - Osho I am trying very hard to clear my head. And of course it does’nt work that way. My heart and body are so full of so many emotions that I do’nt allow to be there. Because it feels too much. And it seems too heavy and too dark. So I made a visualization of how I allow everything to be there in softness and lightness. So that I can breathe, flow and create again.

for @mamacashfund

I’m an artist. I express myself, my feelings and emotions, through self portraits. I am what I am doing. I use my whole body for my art. Clothing, nudity, make-up, poses, everything is important for those images. But there seem to be certain things you just can’t do any more when you are fifty (or older). Like putting on colorful make-up. Or shaving of your long brown-dyed hair. Or showing a (big) cleavage. Or dressing like you used to do. You are older now. You should dress your age, act your age. With a natural make-up and a turtle neck. ;-)

I make my art for myself and for women who connect with my art. And I don’t need ‘advice’ or remarks on how I should dress or how I should do my make-up at my age or whatever. Looking at my best or looking younger is not my topic. Realness and emotion is. #MyBodyIsMine

Let’s embrace life and aging and diversity. I love all women, all of them. We all have our own story we want to express in life. I know I’m privileged being a white cis-woman. That’s why I support this campaign with all my heart. I want every woman in the world to feel as free as I am to live her life as she chooses to.#MyBodyIsMine

From the website of @mamacashfund:“In the face of continuing limitations on our safety, choices and self-expression, the #MyBodyIsMine campaign calls on women from all walks of life to share their stories. Despite the widely different contexts, many of the obstacles we face and the dreams we pursue are universal. By sharing experiences and listening to others, #MyBodyIsMine emboldens women to demand the right to lead the life they want and deserve.

Executive Director Zohra Moosa of @mamacashfund put it this way: “Patriarchy persists through our silence. It gets stronger when we’re quiet. So we need to get loud and work together.” That’s why we’re inviting everyone to get their own temporary #MyBodyIsMine tattoo (available here in exchange for a small donation), take a selfie and post a statement on Instagram.”

Here we go again. I am too much. Here I am. With all my selfs.

It is what it is. And then it starts to rain as well. I depict myself.

Photo 48 of 48. It took a while. (I just kept looking silly at the lens haha) I’m a little better again. On Sunday I drew a card from those totem animals, medicine cards. It was the crow. And now I think about the crow and its story all the time. Aphrodite somewhere in the back of my head far away. Will come again. Being sick is, for me, also thinking very deep and difficult about everything . Sometimes useful but it usually doesn’t start that useful. Such an inspiration card helps me to focus on 1 topic. I wear my black feather earring to keep reminding me of crow and what he wants to tell me.

Today in the ‘studio’. :-) Photo shoot for a collage about Aphrodite who is now over 50 years old.

It is Sunday and I am almost better from that stupid flu.

Mijn eerste try-out met mijn zeefdrukraam van (Bobbin Hood

The magic bra is almost ready! looking forward to start photographing again!

Today’s workplace with a view. So glad the sun’s shining today!

Expositie Femmes Fatales today in the Municipal Museum Den Haag. Finding me some inspiration!

Embroidery for my new imagination / project. Sneak peek!

black and white try-out

homework part 2.2 for the Satijn Panyigay course I’m going to again on Saturday. My trial of the iPhone app now with my own camera. Long shutter time and two poses.

homework part 2.2 for the Satijn Panyigay course I’m going to again on Saturday. My trial of the iPhone app now with my own camera. Long shutter time and two poses.

New project in the Persephone series. 200 x 91 cm. My back hurts, my apartment is too small, I swear and shine at the same time. It is wonderful to work this big again.

longshutter app iPhone

longshutter app iPhone

us two

playing with slowshutter app on my iPhone

long shutter experiment

us two

Homesick - 51 days, 26 beds. And now sew it all together and then it’s a foldout book!

100 days conceptual playground ⁸⁰⁄₁₀₀

us two

us two

“Looking inside herself / She breaks the glass / Turns her head backwards / She’s fallen down again” (Eurythmics)

100 days conceptual playground ⁴¹⁄₁₀₀ water, 2018

“Here comes the rain again / Falling on my head like a memory / Falling on my head like a new emotion / I want to walk in the open wind / I want to talk like lovers do / I want to dive into your ocean / Is it raining with you “ (Eurythmics)

Setting up my camera for tomorrow morning for shooting the tenth photo for my series ‘homesick’in my room at Parador de Jarandilla de la Vera Carlos V.

100 days conceptual playground ³⁄₁₀₀

100 days conceptual playground ¹⁄₁₀₀ -2018

exploring alter-ego’s